Communications companies (e.g., telecommunications operators) issue financial charges to customers in return for services rendered. The revenue realized by communications companies upon customer payment (whether in advance or after service) defrays, among other things, the initial capital outlay and maintenance of the network infrastructure, as well as day-to-day operating costs.
Some customers may pay a flat fee for communications services. But most customers have an account, established, e.g., via a contract or fee arrangement, which is structured or arranged, at least in part, so that the customer is assessed a communications fee which is dependent upon an amount of time or other network resource which is utilized by the customer (e.g., degree or quality of service, calendar or clock time of service, for example). The fee or charge typically either reduces a prepaid amount existing in the customer's account, or accumulates against the credit of the customer and is presented for subsequent payment.
Billing and/or charging which is dependent upon resource utilization imposes significant structural and informational requirements. For example, for charging purposes the communications network faculties or nodes involved in setup or administration of the services (e.g., of a call or connection) must provide some type of monitoring of resource consumption by multitudinous customers, many of whom are engaged in diverse types of calls or resource utilization activities. The resource monitoring and/or other types of reports must somehow be communicated to a billing system maintained by the communications operator. The signaling and information flow involved in such billing interactions between communications network nodes and the billing system are complex, and accordingly can be susceptible to inefficiencies and potential inaccuracies.
Billing systems connected to communications equipment are generally quite flexible, often involving large computer or data processing sites or nodes. But communications billing services lack the capability to provide real-time credit control (to protect the operator from credit losses) and real-time spending control (to protect the end-user from over spending). The lack of real-time control results, at least in part, from the fact that the communications billing systems generally only act upon historical records received from the communications equipment.
Billing systems essentially build a subscriber account balance based on historical data records received from the communications system and/or charging system. This historical data is typically sent to the billing system in Call Detail Record (CDR) files. This historical data is used by the billing system to form itemized invoices and itemized usage data statements (“bills”). However, the billing system lacks the ability to handle the balance and usage in real-time. This is particularly problematic in the event that CDRs sent from the telecom/charging system get lost before they reach the billing system, or arrive late, in which case the billing system account would not accurately reflect the resources actually utilized by the customer.
Typically the charging system connected to a communications system uses real-time interfaces to build the subscriber account balance in real-time and does not have to rely on historical data records. On the other hand, the charging system lacks the benefit of handling itemized invoice/usage statements, since historical data is not stored within the real-time charging system.
Problems can result since the charging system of the communications network does not have both real-time and historical perspectives. For example, when a subscriber uses his/her phone (for, e.g., speech, short message service (SMS), or other service), the communications network sends a request in real-time to the charging system for credit/spending control to decide if usage by the customer is currently allowed. If usage is allowed, the charging system reserves money (or other units) and sends an acknowledgment back to the communications system. After the usage starts, intermediate charges are levied periodically during the usage as the charging system sends CDRs to the billing system. At end of usage, e.g., at the end of a connection or call, a final charge is determined by the charging system and sent as a CDR to the billing system. Thus, in conjunction with (e.g., after) each intermediate and/or final charge a CDR is produced in charging system and sent to the billing system.
As mentioned above, the CDRs are forwarded to the billing system. In some cases a CDR might get lost before it reaches the billing system. In case of a lost CDR, the billing system has no receipt regarding usage for the particular event covered by the lost CDR. Thus, when a CDR is lost the real-time account (maintained by the charging system) and the offline account (maintained by the billing system) are out of synchronization. Since, on the one hand, the real-time credit and spending control is based on real-time account balance, but on the other hand the invoice/usage statement is based on the offline account balance, there is a misalignment of the real-time credit/spending control with the credit/spending amount on invoice/usage statement.